Guess who gets to work from home?

That’s right! Me!!!! Pajamas + cats + homemade coffee. Oh, and sleeping an extra 45 minutes 🙂

It’s times like this when I’m glad that I picked the field of interactive design over print design. Not that I don’t love print design, ’cause I surely do. But not everyone in my office gets to work from home while we’re flooded out. I’m just saying.

I got to the office this morning in my rubber boots and discovered that while the carpeting was very squishy with smelly dirty floodwater, they had already managed to remove all the standing water. The rubber baseboards had been ripped away and Karen and Hillsman had hoisted up everyone’s computers and anything else that was on the floor. Karen said the water was rising so fast she could barely keep up on Sunday.

This morning the maintenence people had put giant blower fans all over the place… trying to dry out the carpeting? God, I hope not. My esteemed place of employment certainly likes to cut corners and the blower fans were their solution the previous two times the office flooded (did I mention this is the third time in 18 months?) Previously only the two offices closest to the back door flooded. This time the entire basement got it, so we’ve been assured that they are considering replacing the carpet.

All I can say is: Mold. Eeew. And, health hazard, anyone? The place was already starting to smell weird and dirty and chemically.

I guess this is what happens when we get 10 inches of rain in 40 hours.

We had a staff meeting this morning where we discussed options for relocation (after we considered and discarded the idea of continuing to work in our flooded offices while they reconstruct them). Several of us went to scout a couple of locations on campus that had been offered to us, including the White House building (the little apartment building that we worked out of from 1994-2004).

In the end, it was decided that the web team would work from home, the administrative assistant would work from the desk of another administrative assistant who was on vacation, and the rest of the team would move up to the 3rd floor of McFarlin Auditorium, in a room used to store junk. I’m not sure exactly where they planned to put everybody amidst the boxes of t-shirts, footballs, old lamps, boxes of envelopes, discarded filing cabinets, etc. But whatever, I got to go home!

Anyway, they sent me packing, so here I am with my little home office setup for at least the next week. Great timing, since today I took my home computer in for its logic board replacement, and I was afraid I’d be computerless for a week.